It's one am, you must be lonely
by Cuits
Summary: Things you said to me on the phone, after one am.


**02/06/2002 01:12 a.m.**

The night is hot and unforgiving, the hair that scapes her ponytail is plastered on the damp skin of her neck as she walks through the parking lot of the 24 hours open store. She is tired and too warm to be anywhere outside the action field of a fan but they were running out of supplies and it is always safer for her to be out in the open than it is for Mulder.

She opens the passenger car door of the dull grey Honda Civic they managed to pay in cash and just as she's letting the grocery bags drop unceremoniously on the seat, the back pocket of her pants starts to vibrate screaming for her attention.

The screen of her prepaid cell phone doesn't say his name but there is literally nobody else that could be calling her to this number.

"If you have any late night cravings, I'm still in the parking lot but I warn you, if I don't get to bed and under the fan in less than fifteen minutes I might pass out."

"No late night cravings that don't include you on the bed and under the fan." There is a mischievous smile implied in his tone and for a moment Scully's breath catches in her throat. The burning mark inside her made by his absence is finally healing but she feels still raw and tender. She can't help the way her heart still skips a beat everytime she hears his voice.

"So, you were just calling to flirt with me?" She smiles because despite living in cheap hotel rooms to stay under the authorities' radar and being on the FBI wanted list, she smiles quite often now, the kind of smiles that are relaxed, playful and a little bit teasing. Maybe it is not that appropriate under the circumstances, but it feels nice and she is not ready to let it go just yet.

"Contrary to what you may think, I always called to flirt with you."

"Even when all you talked about was flesh-eating mutants and blood-sucker psychics?"

"Specially when when all I talked about was flesh-eating mutants and blood-sucker psychics."

She laughs out loud as she seats behind the steering wheel. She is blonde and not so extremely thin now. There are some freckles on her nose too that aren't quite visible on the rear view mirror and she wonders if this is her new self, the matching exterior for the new set of goals and fears she has recently acquired.

"Scully? Is everything okay?"

There is this sudden lump on her throat when she hears the concern in his voice. It isn't unfamiliar but it usually comes with the memories of their lost son. "What if we can't do this, Mulder? What if we aren't suited for relatively normal? What if — what if without the FBI and the monsters in the dark and the world against the two of us this doesn't work?"

There it is, her biggest fear spoken out loud for the world and Mulder to hear. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply once, twice.

"I don't believe such a thing as normal exist," says Mulder, his voice soft and soothing. "I don't believe that all the other people in the world aren't fighting their own battles. What I do believe, what I want to believe is in the extreme, wonderful possibilities."

"Such as?"

"Such as you suddenly regaining your common sense and leaving me behind."

She recognizes it for what it is, his biggest fear spoken out loud for the world and her to hear. "Oh Mulder, you know that is not going to happen."

"I'm not really me without you, Scully. It has been that way for quite some time."

They hang up after a prolonged silence and she starts the engine. She really needs to get to the bed, under the fan and beside Mulder.

The night is still hot but somehow it feels less unforgiving.

 **12/12/2001 01:26 a.m.**

She jumps out of the bed as soon as she hears the first ring of her phone. He heart is racing even if her mind is not really awake yet. William had a colic for the better part of the week and sleep deprivation is her new default functioning state.

"Scully," she says, her voice muffled with sleep. The room dark as night as she waits for someone to speak. "Hello?"

Five more seconds pass before she opens her eyes and her hands clutch the phone because she knows — she just knows that it is Mulder at the other end of the line.

He can't talk, she knows. There is always someone listening and God only knows what catastrophe a single word could provoke, so she closes her eyes and concentrates on hearing his breathing from far away. She memorizes it, the way he slowly inhales and exhales and she imagines she can feel his warmth and his presences near her, imagines his smell surrounding her to sleep.

She goes to bed with the phone next to her ear, an open line and a silent conversation and imagining is enough.

 **15/05/2000 01:02 a.m.**

She checks her watch and changes the channel for the umpteenth time in the last fifteen minutes.

It is absurd. She is being absurd. Genii don't exist and therefore nothing catastrophic is going to happen. Still, she fiddles with her fingers in a futile attempt to control her anxiety. She should call. She could call. There is absolutely nothing suspicious about calling Mulder this late at night, it doesn't have any kind of special meaning and yet… yet, her mind reminds her, it maybe does now.

The ringtone startles her and she takes a couple of second to calm her breathing before answering the call.

"Well, did you get your third wish granted?" she says as a greeting.

"I did."

She waits for him to elaborate and when it is clear that he is not going to, she prompts, "And, aren't you going to tell me?"

"Sure, come over and I will tell you."

It is a simple sentence pronounced in no way out of the ordinary, but his voice triggers her memory and for a moment the image of Mulder naked over her as her hands entangle in his hair is all that she can see.

"It's late. I should go to bed."

It has happened a handful of times, never planned and never discussed and it's kind of driving her insane because she dreams with the smell of his hair as his hands get lost between her legs and somehow her skin has learned to miss his skin so, so quickly and so, so much but she doesn't have any right to claim and she doesn't have enough courage to ask.

"You are clearly awake and tomorrow is Saturday. Come on, Scully, come over," he pleads. "We can watch a movie, I'll even cook something, I think I have microwave popcorn."

"I'm not sure microwaving popcorn can be considered cooking, Mulder."

"Well it's about the only thing I can decently fix. That and breakfast." She wonders if there is a hidden invitation inside that invitation. "Come on, Scully, aren't you a little curious?"

She is not sure if he is referring to his breakfast cooking skills or his granted wish but she is curious about either of them. Both. Her cheeks burn and the tips of her fingers tingle and she dares to hope that he wants her almost as much as she wants him.

"Ok," she decides, her heartbeat speeding senselessly, "but if I fall asleep on your couch again this time is on you."

"Believe me, I won't be the one complaining."

She hangs up and takes her jacket and her keys.

It feels like jumping off a cliff.

 **09/12/1998 01:11 a.m.**

"Hey Scully I know it's kind of late and this is going to sound kind of ridiculous, but do you have any idea as to why I have a waterbed on my bedroom?"

 **16/11/1997 01:07 a.m.**

She came back from the hospital three days ago, still thin, pale and exhausted. Apparently miraculous cancer remission doesn't come with instant regaining of health and so she has spent her days getting slowly acquainted with her belongings, the ones that she thought she would never see again.

Her sheets don't smell like illness anymore, her bed doesn't make her feel like she is in jail and with Mulder arguing with her on the phone while they watch the same tv show, she does not feel alone either.

"Come on, Scully, you can't be serious."

"They were clearly on a break, Mulder."

He snorts his indignation to state his claim.

This is their new routine, catching up with tv-shows and commenting on the life of fictional characters. It is relaxed and easy, far easier than talking about the implications of the chip that is is now located under the skin of her nape.

"That's it. I don't like him. He is a sham," he says with conviction.

She finds it endearing and amusing that they can manage to argue about this too, like they were genetically wired to disagree.

"Aren't you being a little harsh?"

"He has been supposedly pining for her since high school, if you've been after someone for so long, you just don't go fucking around at the first chance you got, you are going to want to stay around and work your ass off for another chance." He makes a pause in his argument and Scully can hear the cracking of a sunflower seed. "At least, you wait for more than two hours to move on."

"Oh really? Is that the voice of experience talking?" she instigates half-joking.

"Of pinning for unattainable girls?" He sighs longingly. "Absolutely."

She tries to picture in her mind's eye a Mulder on his twenties, with his youthful charm, his good looks and puppy eyes longingly following some long legged blonde girl around.

"You know what they say, their loss."

"Yeah, it is what they say," he jokes. "Let's see what do you say in four or five years when I'm still following you around."

Four or five years. Not so long ago she never thought she would see the day.

On the TV, Phoebe, Chandler, Monica and Joey are trapped in a bedroom, bantering about eating organic wax and they both laugh at the same joke in sync.

"Ask me in four or five years then."

 **15/08/1995 01:00 a.m.**

"Scully? What do you know about ? Scully?"

 **25/09/1993 01:08 a.m.**

She is out of her shoes as soon as she is inside her apartment. It smells fresh, clean and familiar and for the first time since she can remember she feels at odds in among her things, like all her belongings are watching her and asking to themselves who is this stranger that looks so tired and smells faintly of bile.

She shudders as she takes out her suit jacket on her way to the bathroom, feeling suddenly too small without her big clothes to protect her and the person she sees in the mirror looks more like a scared stray kitten than like an actual FBI agent.

Maybe she can't do it. Maybe Billy is right and she is not really cut out for being in law enforcement and she should run as fast and as far away from liver-eating suspect as she possibly can.

The cellphone is barely audible over the sound of the running water filling the bathtub and for a moment she is tempted to let the call go straight to voicemail. She sighs and drags herself to the living room and when he picks the phone up the caller id doesn't give her any clue of who is the caller.

"Dana Scully," she says and for a couple of moments she has the unreasonable fear of hearing her brother's voice telling her I told you.

"As a medical doctor, do you have any secret method to getting rid of this awful bile scent?"

Mulder. Her sigh of relief must be hearable from from the east coast.

"Believe me, I wish I had one."

"I'm wondering if at this point bathing in patchouli would have a better or worse outcome."

They've only been partners for less of a month and his voice over the phone is somehow caught in between feeling familiar and new at the same time.

"Take it from a professional. Life is too frail to use too much patchouli."

He laughs softly and she can't help but smile a little in return.

"Listen, i just… I don't know if I could have solved this case without your medical expertise and… well, maybe this partnership is going to work out after all. If you end up really not being a spy with the only purpose of debunk my life work."

She is not sure if it means to be a joke or not, if he is trying to compliment her or just appease her to get his way in the end, but it's late, she is tired and the recognition from someone who can't shake off either the smell of bile seems to be exactly what she needed to hear.

"Yes, I think it's going to work. If you end up not being a psychotic lunatic with paranoid delusions."

She saves his number in the memory of the phone as soon as they hang up but is not until she is already soaking in the tub that she realizes she hasn't even said good night before ending the conversation.

It's okay. She will say goodbye the next time he calls.


End file.
